The Warners even considered volunteering to watch Moody’s 11-month-old infant. Yet, Moody struck them as too protective to leave her baby behind and they decided against it.

That made the news even more terrible when, four days later, the Warners learned that Moody had drowned her baby, then herself, in a motel room bathtub near Atlantic City.

An unpredictable woman

Around noon on July 21, four days after Moody and her baby left Boiling Springs for New Jersey, police pulled up to Stacy Ray Vanover’s home in Wise, Va.

The 34-year-old water-treatment plant worker and Tracy Moody had dated for three years. The drowned baby was his daughter.

The couple met in 2008. Moody was vague about her background and she was unpredictable.

She threw herself into Vanover’s battle for custody of a son he had with another woman. Vanover won custody of the boy, now 3. Yet, when Moody cared for the toddler while his father worked, he began to suffer unexplained bruises, cuts and burns, Vanover said. One time, Vanover came home to find that Moody had shaved his little boy’s head.

Moody gave birth to their child in August 2010 and named her Isabella Anne Marie Moody. Moody’s 11-year-old son Jack visited them during breaks from the Milton Hershey School, where he was a boarding student. Vanover didn’t understand why the boy didn’t live with Moody, but she said Hershey was the best place for Jack.

When Vanover was offered a good job in Florida, Moody flat out refused to go. She said she couldn’t live in Florida, but wouldn’t give a reason. Later, Vanover said he learned Moody might have faced criminal charges for prostitution there.

He also later read medical records of Moody’s, which he said her ex-husband, Dan Moody, sent him. Vanover said the psychiatric problems listed included narcissistic traits and multiple personality disorder.

“I’m 34 years old. It’s not like I’m just a rookie in the dating pool. I don’t know how I didn’t pick this up. There was so many little things that were out there that I just brushed under the rug,” Vanover said.

“She’d manipulate people. It wasn’t just me. She had done this all over,” he said.

When their three-year relationship ended, Moody moved to Boiling Springs, saying she wanted to be closer to her son at Milton Hershey. She moved in with Heidi Regel, a single mom she met on Craigslist who offered a room in her home in exchange for child care and house help.

From Regel’s home, Moody made endless calls to Vanover and his family. She railed against him for refusing to reconcile. Vanover said she tried to get him fired from his job by calling the Wise police chief and saying Vanover was using drugs. Police told Vanover they didn’t believe Moody and advised him to cut off contact.

Vanover said Moody set up accounts on social media sites in his name. She’d pretend to be him and arrange meetings. Strangers would show up at Vanover’s job, expecting dates.

When Moody told Vanover he’d never see their baby again because she was putting Isabella up for adoption, Vanover called Cumberland County Children and Youth. Carlisle office director Wendy Hoverter said she doesn’t comment on investigation requests.

“It was just unfreaking real. I had tried for more than two months [to get Isabella back]. The only thing I didn’t do was go up [to Boiling Springs] and grab her. I’d have much rather gone to jail for that than go through this,” Vanover said.

Isabella was drowned the day before a Virginia court hearing on her custody was to be held.

Something no one could touch

A child separated from its parent.

That conflict defined Tracy Moody’s life. She turned her first daughter over to her adoptive parents. Then, she lost a fight to keep the two boys she had with Dan Moody. She sent her fourth child, Jack, to boarding school at age 9. Ultimately, Moody kept her fifth child, Isabella, with her in death.

Moody herself had been adopted when she was 5 days old.

No one kept it a secret. She knew that her real mother had more kids but didn’t put them up for adoption.

Still, Moody seems to have a received a loving upbringing by Bud and June Adams, who were actually her mom’s aunt and uncle. Bud had been a pro wrestler and race car driver before settling on a career as a mechanic. Bud and June were devoted to the Pentecostal church in Kingsport, Tenn.

“I was a senior in high school when my mom and dad adopted Tracy. Her biological mother said she watched my mother raise two good girls. She thought my mother would be good for Tracy,” Aretha Jones-Jachimski said.

But there was something in Tracy that no one could touch, said her sister, who now lives in Florida. Moody was mentally gifted, but she got involved in drugs and alcohol as a teen. She gave birth to a daughter before she was 20. Bud and June Adams raised the baby.

“Tracy lived a troubled life. She could be one of the best people you ever met and she could be loyal to a fault. But she had a dark side, too,” Jones-Jachimski said.

“I think there were issues of abandonment. [Tracy] grew up knowing she was adopted, but questioning. She might have wondered, ‘Why didn’t she keep me?’¤” Jones-Jachimski said.

Moody was married several times. No one seemed sure how often.

Her first marriage, to Dan Moody in 1993, was when she was 22. He now lives in Florida with the couple’s two sons and, according to published reports, hadn’t seen his ex-wife since their children, now 16 and 17, were toddlers. Dan Moody declined a request to be interviewed for this story.

In the midst of their messy divorce, Tracy Moody was in a motorcycle crash that landed her in a hospital intensive-care unit and caused brain injury.

“Tracy was an extremely intelligent person. After her motorcycle accident, she still had an IQ of 143, even after the brain damage. Sometimes there’s a fine line between intelligence and being completely insane,” Jones-Jachimski said.

A court appointed Jones-Jachimski to supervise Moody’s visits with her sons. One time, when the boys were 3 and 4, Tracy asked her sister to help her run off with them. Jones-Jachimski said she refused, and Tracy was furious.

“She slapped me in front of the boys. They started crying,” she said.

Tracy Moody’s death brought the boys back in touch with their aunt.

“We were able to reconnect during the memorial service [for Moody]. They were not aware that I even existed and I live just 20 minutes from where they are,” said the 58-year-old Jones-Jachimski.

She and her nephews have traded emails. And she dug out old pictures to send them. They spent Labor Day together on a boat at a lake.

It was the kind of happy family gathering that seemed to elude Moody through her life.

In 2000, Moody gave birth to John Albert ‘Jack’ Corley, her fourth child. His father, William C. “Billy” Corley, loved motorcycles and died riding one in 2004. His death hit Moody hard. In a June 29 letter to the Warners, Moody described the toll: “Thank you so much for your help with Jack and for your prayers. Jack had a good life until his dad died and our life unraveled.”

Moody raised Jack longer than any of her other children.

“Jack was the center of her world. She was so happy when he was accepted into the Hershey School. She wanted better things out of this world for Jack, things like the education that school could afford. She would always talk about how well he was doing there, in his classes and just in life,” said Erin Dalton, a friend of Moody’s who lives in Big Stone Gap, Va.

At issue now is whether the boy will return to Hershey.

“Everything must be done to help him stay in Milton Hershey School. [It] has been the best thing, apart from my love and guidance, that I have ever been able to give one of my children. Jack can succeed in this life if he continues [there],” Moody’s will states.

Moody appointed Jones-Jachimski and Renee Blissett, a Chicago cousin, as Jack’s guardians. However, Jones-Jachimski said they have met resistance from other relatives who insist Jack should live in Tennessee where he has family, including cousins his age.

Milton Hershey spokeswoman Connie McNamara said she couldn’t discuss student information, and Blissett declined to be interviewed for this story.

The Warners have stayed in touch with Jack, but wouldn’t discuss his schooling.

Regel said she hasn’t talked to the boy since he left Pennsylvania in July. The last day she saw him, “I gave him a real big hug. I told him everything would work out,” Regel said. 

Erratic behavior

Regel got along well with Moody when the women met in May.

“At first, she was great. We sat and talked all the time,” Regel said.

Moody told her she was a nomad and lived a wild, reckless life.

While living in Regel’s house, Moody carried on relationships with a few men she met online and spent hours talking to them on the phone. Moody claimed she was married to a man in Tennessee who wanted to divorce her. She didn’t want to lose his health care coverage and had tried to barter, telling the man she’d divorce if he’d co-sign a loan for a car.

Regel said Moody talked the most about Vanover.

“Stacy was actually the one she [hoped to] settle down with. I think [he] was the love of her life, actually,” Regel said.

Yet, Moody was telling the Warners, Jones-Jachimski and others that Vanover was evil and that she feared he would harm Isabella.

Moody became obsessed with Vanover. One spring afternoon, Regel picked up her phone downstairs and overheard Moody screaming at someone on the upstairs extension.

“She was saying, ‘Then just let us come home. Let us come back.’ They were just going at it. A flag went up when that happened,” Regel said.

Then something happened that intensified Moody’s erratic behavior.

She had fretted about being overweight. She ordered diet pills over the Internet that contained ephedra, a stimulant with dangerous side effects, including seizures, psychosis and death. Moody quickly lost 30 pounds. Regel said the pills altered more than her body.

“The change was amazing She was mentally not with it. She got aggressive with me, she got aggressive with my son. [Isabella] would scream and scream and scream. You could hear the baby was upset. Isabella never cried,” Regel said.

Regel said Moody started taking vodka with the pills.

On Sunday night, July 17, Moody said she was taking Isabella to Virginia for a custody hearing. Regel was confused. If she feared losing Isabella, why would she risk taking the baby along? Moody had also offered to take Regel’s 3-year-old daughter, although Regel declined.

“I called her on her cellphone after she left and I told her what my concerns were,” Regel said.

Moody dismissed them.

In fact, she likely never planned to go to the hearing.

Ten days earlier, on July 7, Moody had visited a Carlisle bank to get witness signatures on a will she drew up. The will doesn’t mention Isabella, but includes many provisions for Jack’s care.

The directive also states that her ashes should be kept for Jack “until he is older and ready to throw them into the Caribbean ocean.”

Moody put together packets with explicit orders for the people she left behind. A list of all her belongings at Regel’s — describing their exact location in the home — was in Jones-Jachimski’s packet.

Finally, Moody updated her Facebook page. The posts indicate she wanted investigators to blame Vanover for hers and Isabella’s deaths. Although Vanover isn’t named, his birthdate is listed.

At 11:40 p.m. July 18, minutes before the time authorities said the drownings occurred, one final comment was posted to Moody’s Facebook page: “Serial killer in southwest Virginia: females beware.”

“It has really hurt’

The bodies weren’t found until 10 a.m. July 21.

Stacy Vanover’s father, Bruce, and a friend drove to New Jersey to claim Isabella. When they got there, they couldn’t find the coroner’s office. They finally pulled into a motel along Black Horse Pike to ask directions. Later, they learned it was the EconoLodge where Isabella and her mother died.

Tracy Moody’s body hadn’t been collected when they got there. No one could say where Jack was.

“We didn’t know if Jack was alive or dead,” Bruce Vanover said. “It has really, really hurt [Stacy’s mother] and I more than you can imagine.”

Information Moody left in her hotel room led her family to Jack in Boiling Springs.

After a memorial in Appalachia, Va., Isabella was buried in Riverview Cemetery in East Stone Gap under the name “Isabella Anne Marie Vanover.” Tracy Moody’s family retrieved her body and held a memorial service for her.

Looking back on the loss, Moody’s sister still struggles to accept that authorities had ruled out an intruder in the case.

“The detective and forensics people in New Jersey said, based on the evidence they found in the room and everything, they feel that there wasn’t [anyone] else involved,” Jones-Jachimski said.

Atlantic County major crimes division spokeswoman Hayleigh Walz refused to disclose specifics in the case. However, she said a medical examiner performed autopsies on the bodies and ruled Moody’s death a suicide and Isabella’s death a homicide.

Some have asked how a healthy, grown woman could drown herself.

Cumberland County Coroner Todd Eckenrode wasn’t involved in the case but said it’s possible.

“Absolutely. Usually, there’s some type of medicine, drugs on board,” he said.

No suicide note has surfaced publicly.

Jones-Jachimski said that although she and Moody spoke frequently on Facebook, Moody gave no clue to her plans.

“As her sister, I have searched my soul trying to think, did she say something that would have indicated something like this?” Jones-Jachimski said.

An act of revenge?

Jones-Jachimski will never be able to resolve her sister’s contradictions.

“Throughout her life, she’d flat out lie about things. She certainly didn’t live a life that was exemplary by many people’s standards. But she loved her children very much. There’s evidence of that as I go through her paperwork,” Jones-Jachimski said.

For instance, Moody never dropped her married name after the divorce, saying she wanted her sons to be able to find her when they grew up. She sent money to another relative to buy yearly Florida newspaper ads that wished her sons happy birthday and merry Christmas.

“Tracy was an incredibly loving mother. She constantly mentioned how much she missed the children she had with [Dan Moody]. ... She would mention things like, ‘Today is my child’s birthday. I wish I was allowed to be there,’¤” Dalton said.

Regel, too, said Moody cared deeply for her children.

“I know that she had a very loving side,” she said.

A week after Jones-Jachimski collected Moody’s belongings at Regel’s house, a package came for Moody. Regel opened it and found another supply of the diet pills. She decided to try them.

“I took them for four days and I was the most aggressive, pissed-off person you ever met. So I got online and looked them up. The first symptom they listed was suicide. I think it messed with [Moody],” Regel said.

Maybe. But the Vanovers insist Moody killed her daughter as an act of revenge.

“I don’t know if she just thought her whole world was coming down on her or what. She wasn’t ‘right’ I guess. I don’t know,” Vanover said.

“Isabella was a happy baby and she was the only way [Moody] could hurt me and she knew that. She tried everything she could to mess with me,” Stacy Vanover said.

Kelly Warner said she focuses on what Moody did for her son.

“Jack is an extraordinary young man. I told Tracy, ‘You have done a wonderful job raising your son,’” Warner said.

Moody must have been gratified to hear that.

The day after she left Boiling Springs, she called the Warners to check in on Jack. When no more calls followed, Warner grew worried. She asked Jack about his last conversation with his mother.

The boy told Warner his mother said, “If anything happens to me, just know that I love you.”

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